BirSaNN Posted May 25, 2023 Posted May 25, 2023 Maksym had been fighting for 200 hours without a break when he was killed by a Russian sniper in the city of Bakhmut. "For eight days he did not eat, or sleep," his mother Lilia says. "He couldn't even close his eyes for five minutes because the sniper could shoot." There's a reason why she now calls Bakhmut "hell". It's the city that took the life of one son and left her only other child seriously injured. Her one scant comfort - that one died saving the life of the other. Maksym and Ivan volunteered to fight when Russia invaded Ukraine last year. At the time Maksym was 22 years old and Ivan just 18. Ivan, the younger brother who still carries the scars, says they were inseparable. "He was always with me and I with him. For me, he was the dearest person." Ivan shows me videos and photos of them together - in a trench, in a military vehicle, trying to get some rest. As time passes, you see two smiling, handsome young men change, gradually appearing wearier as war strips away their innocence. Their last moments together were spent engaged in brutal house-to-house fighting in Bakhmut. "It was impossible to sleep there. We were being attacked 24/7," Ivan says. The brothers' unit was trapped in a windowless room of a building. They'd had to punch through walls to make firing positions. That's when they received an order to pull back. Ivan recalls the moment before he was wounded. "I remember I was reloading; I came out from behind a wall and there was a flash. I was paralysed and I fell." He says he then felt the warmth of the blood flowing from his injuries to his face. He didn't think he'd survive. "I thought I was done; I'll bleed out and that'll be it." But Maksym came running to his rescue and dragged him back inside a building for cover. "He revived me, took out my broken teeth and began to give me first aid," says Ivan. That included piercing a hole in Ivan's throat to prevent him from choking. Ivan shares a video of his brother tenderly wiping the blood away soon after the explosion. Another widely shared clip shows Ivan struggling to walk with a gaping wound to his face, but still clutching his Ukrainian flag: a symbol of bravery and resistance in the battle for Bakhmut. Ivan has no doubts that he would have died if it weren't for Maksym's actions. "My brother didn't let me die. He saved me." link: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65626413
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